GROW policy workshop
The workshop is organised by the Global Soil Partnership of the FAO under the framework of the Horizon2020 project GROW Observatory and its Observatory Policy Interface stream of work, aiming to promote participatory governance in Europe. This event brings together policy makers, scientists, thought leaders, civil society stakeholders and growers working in the areas of soil/land conservation, agricultural policy, environmental management, citizen science and Earth Observation, addressing concrete policy and governance challenges.
The two-day workshop aims to:
- Raise awareness on the potential contribution of citizens’ observatories to policy-makers and other key stakeholders related to policy design.
- Gain a better understanding of policy-makers’ data insight needs and priorities to identify the barriers in collaborating with citizen observatories.
- Develop a strategy to overcome the identified barriers for collaboration and key actions to use Citizens' Observatories data for agriculture, environmental management and other critical policy design.
The first day of the GROW Policy Workshop is open to a wider audience and features expert presentations, panel talks and open discussions. A limited number of interested experts will proceed to a second day of hands-on, interactive strategic design sessions.
GROW is a European-wide Citizens’ Observatory engaging thousands of growers, scientists and others passionate about the land. It aims to support a citizen science movement on growing and the land, in order to achieve more sustainable land use practices, better soil and land governance, and a unique data repository for science. So far, the project has engaged hundreds of growers which have deployed 15,000 low-cost soil moisture sensors in their growing spaces in 13 EU countries. Together, this community explores the use of IoT devices for the generation and sharing of citizen-generated environmental data and information for growing and sustainable land practices. This data is relevant to predictive applications for disaster management and to address urgent climate challenges for science and society.
The results of the GROW Policy Workshop will inform a suite of open access publications and presentations targeted at policy, practitioner and academic audiences. The consortium is open to discuss project and research collaboration opportunities related to workshop outcomes and findings with interested participants. A summary report of the workshop will be circulated to all participants.